The Green Label Singles Club

Mountain Dew's Branded Label Announces Slate of Bands, Goes Monthly

You won't find the word "singles club" anywhere in Mountain Dew's press materials, but that's the best way to describe the current direction of Green Label Sound. The cola brand's free digital music outlet is shifting to a monthly schedule, starting with a release by Inglewood rap duo U-N-I that drops today.

The paid-for clubs of yore, which through the '90s served up 7-inch singles to your doorstep, have shown a resurgence in recent years thanks to a renewed interest in not only vinyl but, of course, singles themselves. The legendary Sub Pop Singles Club wasn't part of an organized marketing push -- quite the opposite, really -- but it and others like it had a similar effect: maintaining a steady stream of buzz.

If fans know that they'll get something new if they visit the GLS site at least once a month, Mountain Dew may now have an easier time keeping it "sticky." And, if this latest succession of singles can maintain listener attention from release-to-release, they'll also have an easier time building up the brand's music sensibility into a more cohesive shape.

It's a little hard to pin down the GLS "sound" at this point, but, genre-wise, releases have leaned toward both indie hip-hop and electronic pop. That said, rock duo Matt & Kim has so far been one of their most prominent bands, and most people with a television set by now have probably seen their song "Daylight," which was a GLS single before it landed on the band's full-length "Grand" earlier this year, and then, most prominently, in a Bacardi ad.

For an up-and-comer like U-N-I, this is the kind of exposure one would have a hard time finagling on his own, but they don't just have fans to win over -- to succeed like Matt & Kim have, making an impression on even more marketers can help keep up momentum. And, of course, there's more than one band out there with its own singles club doing just that.